CHAPTER XXIV. CONCLUSION

After many days, when time sufficed for the people to arrange
their thoughts in reference to the foregoing scene, there was
more than one account of what had been witnessed on the scaffold.

Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of
the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER--the very semblance of
that worn by Hester Prynne--imprinted in the flesh. As
regarded its origin there were various explanations, all of which
must necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne
first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of
penance--which he afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed
out--by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. Others contended
that the stigma had not been produced until a long time
subsequent, when old Roger Chillingworth, being a potent
necromancer, had caused it to appear, through the agency of magic
and poisonous drugs. Others, again and those best able to
appreciate the minister's peculiar sensibility, and the wonderful
operation of his spirit upon the body--whispered their belief,
that the awful symbol was the effect of the ever-active
tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart outwardly, and at
last manifesting Heaven's dreadful judgment by the visible
presence of the letter. The reader may choose among these
theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the
portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase
its deep print out of our own brain, where long meditation has
fixed it in very undesirable distinctness.

It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were
spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have
removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that
there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a
new-born infant's. Neither, by their report, had his dying words
acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any--the
slightest--connexion on his part, with the guilt for which Hester Prynne had
so long worn the scarlet letter. According to these
highly-respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was
dying--conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude
placed him already among saints and angels--had desired, by
yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to
express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of
man's own righteousness. After exhausting life in his efforts
for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death
a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and
mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are
sinners all alike. It was to teach them, that the holiest
amongst us has but attained so far above his fellows as to
discern more clearly the Mercy which
looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human
merit, which would look aspiringly upward. Without disputing a
truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version
of Mr. Dimmesdale's story as only an instance of that stubborn
fidelity with which a man's friends--and especially a
clergyman's--will sometimes uphold his character, when proofs,
clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish
him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust.

The authority which we have chiefly followed--a manuscript of
old date, drawn up from the verbal testimony of individuals, some
of whom had known Hester Prynne, while others had heard the tale
from contemporary witnesses fully confirms the view taken in the
foregoing pages. Among many morals which press upon us from the
poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a
sentence:--"Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the
world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be
inferred!"

Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place,
almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale's death, in the
appearance and demeanour of the old man known as Roger
Chillingworth. All his strength and energy--all his vital and
intellectual force--seemed at once to desert him, insomuch that
he positively withered up, shrivelled away and almost vanished
from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the
sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to
consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise revenge; and when,
by its completest triumph consummation that evil principle was left
with no further material to support it--when, in short, there was no
more Devil's work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the
unhumanised mortal to betake himself whither his master would
find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. But, to all
these shadowy beings, so long our near acquaintances--as well
Roger Chillingworth as his companions we would fain be merciful.
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether
hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its
utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and
heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the
food of his affections and spiritual fife upon another: each
leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater,
forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject.
Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem
essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a
celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. In
the spiritual world, the old physician and the minister--mutual
victims as they have been--may, unawares, have found their
earthly stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden
love.

Leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of business to
communicate to the reader. At old Roger Chillingworth's decease,
(which took place within the year), and by his last will and
testament, of which Governor Bellingham and the Reverend Mr.
Wilson were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount
of property, both here and in England to little Pearl, the
daughter of Hester Prynne.

So Pearl--the elf child--the demon offspring, as some people
up to that epoch persisted in considering her--became the
richest heiress of her day in the New World. Not improbably this
circumstance wrought a very material change in the public
estimation; and had the mother and child remained here, little
Pearl at a marriageable period of life might have mingled her
wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest Puritan among them
all. But, in no long time after the physician's death, the
wearer of the scarlet letter disappeared, and Pearl along with
her. For many years, though a vague report would now and then
find its way across the sea--like a shapeless piece of
driftwood tossed ashore with the initials of a name upon it--yet
no tidings of them unquestionably authentic were received.
The story of the scarlet letter grew into a legend. Its spell,
however, was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the
poor minister had died, and likewise the cottage by the sea-shore
where Hester Prynne had dwelt. Near this latter spot, one
afternoon some children were at play, when they beheld a tall
woman in a gray robe approach the cottage-door. In all those
years it had never once been opened; but either she unlocked it
or the decaying wood and iron yielded to her hand, or she glided
shadow-like through these impediments--and, at all events, went
in.

On the threshold she paused--turned partly round--for
perchance the idea of entering alone and all so changed, the home
of so intense a former life, was more dreary and desolate than
even she could bear. But her hesitation was only for an instant,
though long enough to display a scarlet letter on her breast.

And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken
shame! But where was little Pearl? If still alive she must now
have been in the flush and bloom of early womanhood. None
knew--nor ever learned with the fulness of perfect certainty--whether
the elf-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave;
or whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued
and made capable of a woman's gentle happiness. But through the
remainder of Hester's life there were indications that the
recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of love and interest
with some inhabitant of another land. Letters came, with
armorial seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to English
heraldry. In the cottage there were articles of comfort and
luxury such as Hester never cared to use, but which only wealth
could have purchased and affection have imagined for her. There
were trifles too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a
continual remembrance, that must have been wrought by delicate
fingers at the impulse of a fond heart. And once Hester was seen
embroidering a baby-garment with such a lavish richness of golden
fancy as would have raised a public tumult had any infant thus
apparelled, been shown to our sober-hued community.

In fine, the gossips of that day believed--and Mr. Surveyor
Pue, who made investigations a century later, believed--and one
of his recent successors in office, moreover, faithfully believes--that
Pearl was not only alive, but married, and happy, and
mindful of her mother; and that she would most joyfully have
entertained that sad and lonely mother at her fireside.

But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne, here, in New
England, that in that unknown region where Pearl had found a
home. Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet
to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed of
her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron
period would have imposed it--resumed the symbol of which we
have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her
bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and
self-devoted years that made up Hester's life, the scarlet letter
ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and
bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over,
and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. And, as Hester
Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own
profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and
perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself
gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially--in the
continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged,
misplaced, or erring and sinful passion--or with the dreary
burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought came
to Hester's cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and
what the remedy! Hester comforted and counselled them, as best
she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief that, at
some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for
it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order
to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer
ground of mutual happiness. Earlier in life, Hester had vainly
imagined that she herself might be the destined
prophetess, but had long since recognised the impossibility that
any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to
a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened
with a life-long sorrow. The angel and apostle of the coming
revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and
beautiful, and wise; moreover, not through dusky grief, but the
ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make
us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end.

So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the
scarlet letter. And, after many, many years, a new grave was
delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside
which King's Chapel has since been built. It was near that old
and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the
two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tomb-stone served
for both. All around, there were monuments carved with armorial
bearings; and on this simple slab of slate--as the curious
investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the
purport--there appeared the semblance of an engraved
escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald's wording of which may
serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded
legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing
point of light gloomier than the shadow: --